December 15th: Featured Speakers

F. Murray Abraham, American actor who performed generally in small parts and character roles onstage and in film before coming to wider notice after winning an Academy Award for his portrayal of Antonio Salieri in Amadeus (1984). He is currently staring in an Apple TV original show, Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, as author C.W. Longbottom.

Abraham grew up in El Paso, Texas, and was introduced to acting by a teacher in high school. He studied theatre at the University of Texas at El Paso for two years and then moved to Los Angeles. He made his first professional stage appearance in the premiere of Ray Bradbury’s play The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1965) in Los Angeles. Abraham then moved to New York City to study under Uta Hagen. He made his Off-Broadway debut in 1966 in The Fantasticks and first appeared on Broadway in 1968 in The Man in the Glass Booth. While he continued to make stage appearances during the early 1970s, including a part in the 1972–73 Broadway comedy 6 Rms Riv Vu, he also began working in film and television during that time. Abraham appeared in the 1971 movie They Might Be Giants and on TV in Nightside (1973), a pilot for a series that was not produced. He appeared in the Broadway farce The Ritz (1975–76) and played the same role in the 1976 film version of the play. Abraham performed in the Off-Broadway production of David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1976) and in the New York Shakespeare Festival’s productions of John Guare’s Landscape of the Body (1977) and of The Master and Margarita (1978).

Abraham had the lead role in the short Broadway run of Teibele and Her Demon (1979), and in 1980 he starred in a Baltimore production of Cyrano de Bergerac and Off-Broadway in Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. He won critical notice for his performances in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker in 1982 and in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in 1983. Abraham played Omar in Brian De Palma’s film Scarface (1983) before his surprise casting in Amadeus. His controlled multidimensional performance won him both the Oscar and the Golden Globe Award for best actor.

Lisa Banes is an American actress. She was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 1984 for Isn't it Romantic? and won a 1981 Theatre World Award for her performance as Alison Porter Off-Broadway in Look Back in Anger. In film, she has appeared in Cocktail (1988), Freedom Writers (2007), and Gone Girl (2014). She’s also appeared in the 2016 film A Cure for Wellness as the character Hollis.

Banes is an alumnus of The Acting Company and a graduate of Juilliard.

Laura L. Carstensen is Professor of Psychology and the Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy at Stanford University where she serves as founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. Her research has been supported continuously by the National Institute on Aging for more than 25 years and she is currently supported through a prestigious MERIT Award. In 2011, she authored the book, A Long Bright Future: Happiness, Health, and Financial Security in an Age of Increased Longevity. Dr. Carstensen has served on the National Advisory Council on Aging and the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on an Aging Society. In 2016 she was inducted into the National Academy of Medicine. She has won numerous awards, including the Kleemeier Award from the Gerontological Society of America, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the Master Mentor Award from the American Psychological Association. She received a BS from the University of Rochester and PhD in clinical psychology from West Virginia University.

New York Times bestselling author Chip Conley is the hospitality maverick who helped Airbnb's founders turn their fast-growing tech start-up into a global hospitality brand. In Wisdom@Work: The Making of a Modern Elder he shares his unexpected journey at midlife — from CEO to intern — learning about technology as Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy, while also mentoring CEO Brian Chesky. Chip is the founder of the Modern Elder Academy, where a new roadmap for midlife is offered at a beautiful oceanfront campus in Baja California Sur, Mexico. He serves on the board of Encore.org and the advisory board for the Stanford Center for Longevity. www.ChipConley.com

www.modernelderacademy.com

Linkedin: @chipconleysf
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Twitter: @chipconley

Dr. Frank Dooley, chancellor of Purdue University Global, oversees academics for approximately 31,000 students, most of whom earn their degrees online. Purdue Global is part of the Purdue University system, a highly ranked public research university whose flagship institution is located in West Lafayette, Indiana. Prior to becoming Purdue Global chancellor, Dooley was senior vice provost for Purdue University, where he earned an international reputation as being a gifted and innovative teacher, as well as a creative researcher.

Dooley was a key leader of the Purdue team that secured the regulatory approvals and helped launch Purdue Global in 2017, extending Purdue’s land-grant mission to students from across the state and around the nation.

Dooley has received numerous awards for teaching, research, and service, including the Charles B. Murphy Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2009 and the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher in 2011. He was inducted into Purdue's Teaching Academy in 2002 and into the University's Book of Great Teachers in 2014.

His research interests include logistical and supply chain management for food and agribusiness. His publication record includes chapters in 6 books and more than 200 articles and other publications. Dooley, who received his bachelor's degree from St. John's University, his Juris Doctor from University of North Dakota, and his doctoral degree from Washington State University, came to Purdue's Department of Agricultural Economics in 1998.

Carol Hymowitz is a writer, editor and recognized expert on longevity and the retirement savings crisis, management trends and diversity in the workplace. She is co-author of A History of Women in America (Bantam Books) and a contributor to Getting Older; How We're Coping with the Gray Areas of Aging (Wiley e book). She is a contributing consultant at Stanford Center on Longevity and formerly was a senior editor and columnist at The Wall Street Journal and an Editor at Large at Bloomberg.

Charlotte Japp is the founder of CIRKEL, a company that connects older and younger professionals for mutual personal and professional growth. After graduating from Georgetown University, Charlotte started her career in creative marketing and saw the consequences of age segregation in the workplace. Older and younger professionals needed to connect and learn from each other, but had no way to meet. CIRKEL makes networking across generations seamless, inspiring, and impactful – working with both individuals and corporations to bridge the gap. Charlotte was named one of Next Avenue’s 2020 Influencers In Aging and a 2020 Gen2Gen Innovation Fellow. She has been featured in publications like The New York Times and spoken internationally about the magic of connecting generations. www.cirkel.world

I’ll work with you as an accomplished thought leader, strategist, leadership coach and implementation professional focusing on organizational transformation, long-term behavior change, and the trends associated with the future of work. I have worked with organizations of all sizes across many industries to identify, plan and execute transformation programs, from culture to systems to process.

Michael López is an accomplished thought leader, strategist, leadership coach and consulting practice leader focused on organizational transformation, long-term behavior change, and the trends associated with the future of work. Michael recently joined KPMG as a Managing Director, where he assists companies across sectors and government agencies in their transformation journey. In light of the COVID pandemic, Michael is helping companies both adjust to the current crisis, as well as develop long-term strategies for the new remote working experience.

Prior to KPMG, Michael spent nearly five years at Ernst & Young in their People Advisory Services practice. In this role, he created a framework (Future Work Now) to help companies transition to more digital work experience. Prior to joining EY, he spent two years as the Global Director for Innovation & Strategy at Smiths Interconnect where he was responsible for driving innovation performance and strategy development, strategic market analysis, and business planning and analysis. Before joining Smiths, Michael was a Senior Associate with Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) in Los Angeles.

Over his career Michael has developed a deep passion for, and belief in, the power of teams, the impact of leaders and, quite simply, the potential of people. He has translated this passion into a coaching specialization, working with senior leaders and teams to unleash performance. His unique combination of organizational perspective and deep understanding of individual behavior change positions him at the forefront of workforce transformation.

Cinny Kennard, Executive Director at The Annenberg Foundation, has  decades of award-winning leadership and Executive Management in the non-profit sector with established national brands including National Public Radio, Smithsonian Institution, Pew Charitable Trusts and The Federal Communications Commission. Cinny is also is an award-winning broadcast journalist who currently serves on several boards including the Los Angeles Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) at Pepperdine School of Public Policy, The Carole Kneeland Project for Responsible Television Journalism and is a longtime member of the Trusteeship of the International Women’s Forum.

At the Annenberg Foundation, Cinny has worked with the chairman Wallis Annenberg and the board on local, national and global grantmaking in education, in arts and culture, health care and underserved communities.  She has also launched several impactful projects including, AnnenbergTech, the Wallis Annenberg Center for Purposeful Aging scheduled to open in late 2020 in Los Angeles, the Wallis Annenberg PetSpace, has a key board governance seat on the Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts and has worked to craft a public/private partnership to construct permanent supportive housing for the homeless in South Los Angeles. Kennard has bolstered the Foundation management team and presided over an organization which has now given away over 5 billion dollars across Los Angeles, the nation and the globe over 30-years.

Before joining the Annenberg Foundation in January 2015, she was the Senior Vice President of Programming at the Smithsonian Institution and served as a Senior Advisor to the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands creating and driving the outreach plan to bring top Washington D.C. elected officials to Sunnylands, including President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi JinPing for the Sunnylands Summit.

Prior to that, she served as managing director/managing editor of NPR West from 2003 to 2009. During her tenure, NPR West expanded from 20 to nearly 90 full-time employees. Previously, she served as an executive project director and journalism professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. Before that, she was a CBS News correspondent based at various times in Los Angeles, London and Moscow covering battlefield front lines, and before that a local television news reporter at WFAA-TV in Dallas, KHOU-TV in Houston and WANE TV.

Kennard has launched several projects aimed at improving broadcast journalism, including Reliable Resources, the $1.5 million Pew Charitable Trust/USC Annenberg project to improve broadcast television political coverage. She is a co-founder and executive board member of the Carole Kneeland Project for Responsible Television Journalism, and for nine-years, she served as a jury member for the 2015 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for excellence in broadcast journalism.

She has been recognized with the DuPont Columbia University Award for coverage of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and has also been awarded a CINE Golden Eagle among other various awards as an Executive Producer for filmmaking. An accomplished writer, Kennard helped write Best of Both Worlds: Museums, Libraries, and Archives in a Digital Age by G. Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; co-authored a piece for The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation; co-authored “Characteristics of War Coverage by Female Correspondents” in Media and Conflict in the 21st Century; and authored numerous articles for The Huffington Post.

Growing up in a poor, single parent household in North Charleston, South Carolina, a young Tim Scott grew accustomed to moving every few years, as well as the long hours his mom worked to keep a roof over their heads. After failing four classes his freshman year of high school, Tim’s path forward was murky at best.

But thankfully, he had a mom who stuck with him, and met a mentor that showed him the wisdom of conservative principles. Through their belief and his own determination, Tim got his grades back on track, graduated from Charleston Southern University, and eventually built his own successful small business.

Through the lessons taught by his mentor, Tim developed his mission statement: to positively affect the lives of a billion people. That led him to public service, where he was elected to Charleston County Council, the South Carolina House of Representatives, the United States House of Representatives, and the United States Senate.

Since joining the Senate in 2013, Senator Scott has been a national leader on efforts to bring opportunity to every American family. His signature legislation creating Opportunity Zones was passed as part of the 2017 tax reform package, and has the potential to bring billions of dollars of private investment into distressed communities across the country.

As he continues to lead on the implementation of the Opportunity Zones initiative, Senator Scott also plays a critical role in issues regarding workforce development, education and diversity. Whether it’s tackling the skills gap, making sure children have access to the educational environment best suited for them, or working to bring everyone to the table to find solutions, Senator Scott will keep fighting for South Carolinians every single day he serves in the U.S. Senate.

Aaron Smith is the Co-Founder of Savi, a social impact student loan startup. Savi is a student loan benefit used by employers like Boston Medical Center and St Jude Children's Research Hospital, retirement providers like TIAA and AIG, and unions like NEA and SEIU. Before Savi, Aaron co-founded and served as the original Executive Director of Young Invincibles, one of the largest and most impactful youth advocacy and policy non-profits in the country, with a focus on engaging 18 to 34 year olds. Aaron started YI in 2009 while still a student at Georgetown Law School. Through his work at YI, Aaron worked with the Department of Education, the White House, and Congress to make concrete fixes to higher education funding and the student loan process. Aaron has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN.

Ken Smith is the Director of Programs at Stanford Center on Longevity, where he focuses on leveraging Stanford research to help individuals reach old age mentally sharp, physically fit, and financially secure. He also directs Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge, a global university competition that asks young designers to address issues around longevity. Ken brings a broad background of over 20 years of management and engineering experience to his role, including positions in the computing, aerospace, and solar energy industries. Ken holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois with an M.S. from the University of Washington. He lives in the Silicon Valley and is married with two children.

Stacy L. Smith, Ph.D. is the foremost disrupter of inequality in the entertainment industry. Dr. Smith is the Founder of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative (AII), the leading global think tank studying issues of inequality in entertainment. Dr. Smith’s groundbreaking research examines inclusion of gender, race/ethnicity, the LGBT community, people with disabilities and mental health in storytelling across film, TV and digital platforms. The Initiative releases analyses of top-grossing films (on screen, behind the camera, executive ranks), popular music (artists, songwriters, producers), and impediments facing women and individuals from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups in the director's chair. The Initiative also performs economic analyses to investigate the relationship between inclusion and financial performance. Dr. Smith’s work is covered regularly in popular press outlets including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, CBS This Morning, NPR, and many others.

She has authored over 100 book chapters, articles, and reports, along with 40 studies at the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative on various aspects of entertainment, including the landmark CARD report in 2016 and annual studies examining inclusion in top-grossing films and popular music. In addition to being a prolific writer, Dr. Smith speaks routinely on issues of inequality in the media. Her TED Talk has been viewed more than 1 million times, and she has spoken multiple times at the United Nations, the White House, Sundance Film Festival, and the Toronto Film Festival. Other speaking engagements include but are not limited to Promax, the Bloomberg Equality Summit, the Milken Global Conference, and LunaFest. Dr. Smith’s work was also the basis for the docuseries, 4%: Film’s Gender Problem, and she appears in the documentary Half the Picture.

Dr. Smith also works to create and support solutions to increase representation in media. In 2016, with Kalpana Kotagal and Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, she developed the inclusion rider, a contractual clause that guarantees the representation of minorities in films. In 2018, Dr. Smith worked with Brie Larson to advocate for greater access and opportunity for underrepresented film critics at notable film festivals. In 2019, Dr. Smith partnered with TIME'S UP to launch the 4% challenge, which asks Hollywood industry members to work with a female film director in the next eighteen months; the challenge has already been accepted by more than 120 notable creatives and 7 major companies. Dr. Smith served on the Recording Academy Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion following the release of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative’s inaugural study on the music industry and is Founding Board Member of She Is The Music, and the TIME’S UP Global Leadership Board. LA Weekly named Dr. Smith the most influential person in Los Angeles in 2015.

The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has multiple partners which include the following groups and individuals, among others: Sony Pictures Entertainment, Walt Disney Studios, NBCUniversal, Universal Music Group, Women in Animation, The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Endeavor, Spotify, The Annenberg Foundation, The Pritzker-Pucker Family Foundation, Clif Bar Family Foundation, The Harnisch Foundation, The Jacqueline & Gregory, Zehner Foundation, and The David & Lura Lovell Foundation.

Dr. Stubbs is a world expert in exogenous ketone metabolism and its implications for performance, resilience and health-span. She completed her PhD in Metabolic Physiology at the University of Oxford, studying the metabolism and the application of exogenous ketone salts and esters. Whilst completing her studies, she competed on the British International Rowing Team, and was a two-time World Champion lightweight athlete. Brianna spent two years as Research Lead at a San Francisco based start-up called HVMN, where she helped to launch the world's first commercially available ketone ester drink and set up a collaboration with the US Special Operations Command to investigate the effects of ketone drinks on physical and cognitive performance in extreme environments. Brianna is currently Lead Translational Scientist at The Buck Institute for Research on Aging where she's part of a team focused on developing our understanding of ketone biology, the metabolic effects of novel exogenous ketones, and the translation of these findings into tools for implementation as part of a holistic approach to healthy aging.

Johnna Torsone is Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Pitney Bowes Inc. As a member of the senior management leadership team and staff liaison for several committees of the Board of Directors, she provides important strategic and operational guidance in the human resources area. Over the course of her tenure, the company has received recognition for its cutting-edge work on HR transformation, talent development, diversity, and employee health.

Prior to joining Pitney Bowes, Johnna was a law partner in New York City where she practiced employment and labor law for 14 years.

Johnna is a member of the National Academy of Human Resources and serves or has served in leadership positions on several non-profit boards including the Human Resources Policy Association, Fairfield County Community Foundation, Albany Law School, Westport Country Playhouse, INROADS, and Stamford Hospital.  She is also a Governor of the American Health Policy Institute and has served on the boards of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, and Caroline House, as well as the Connecticut Commission on Judicial Compensation.

In 2015, Johnna was recognized by Human Resource Executive Magazine as one of the most powerful women in Human Resources and also received a lifetime achievement award from HRO Magazine.